Ken Levy's Blog

Moving on to something new, but staying close

MSDNArchive — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 02:48:36 GMT

After working at Microsoft for over 7 years as an employee and almost 5 years before that as a contractor/vendor, I’ve decided it’s time for me to do become independent and start my own company. My official last day at Microsoft is July 18^th. I’ve enjoyed all the years working at Microsoft since the early 90s, especially with great people making many friends along the way.

I will continue be involved with Microsoft plus other technologies, attending various developer/technology events, and being active in the communities in general. I’m very enthusiastic about the developer community growth around extending Visual Studio and the plans Microsoft has around upcoming versions of the VS SDK as well as various community member projects recently started. I plan to attend the VSX Developers Conference this September in Redmond and I’m looking forward to talking to many VSX developers and VSIP members there.

My new company is called MashupX, new blog is at http://mashupx.com/blog/, and new email address is klevy@mashupx.com. I will be blogging about my startup company activities, travel, gadgets, movies, and technology in general. I’ll post more details on my blog later this month, so check there soon for more details.

VSX Community Letter for April 2008 posted on VSX Team blog

MSDNArchive — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:57:29 GMT

Just posted the VSX Community Letter for April 2008.

Channel 9: Sean O'Driscoll talks about Microsoft MVPs and MVP program

MSDNArchive — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:29:31 GMT

Video posted today: Channel 9: Sean O'Driscoll: General Manager for Community Support and the MVP Program (36 minutes).

Last year I had this idea to do a video interview of Sean O'Driscoll, a General Manager for Community Support and the MVP Program at Microsoft, to discuss the history, current state, and future of Microsoft MVPs and the MVP Program. This interview is a discussion only, no demos, so downloading the WMA or MP3 audio file is a good option to listen.

Being an MVP myself for much of the 1990s before joining Microsoft as well as being apart of all MVP Summits that Microsoft has hosted, the discussion with Sean was educational and nostalgic. Sean and I also talk at length about communities in general and how passion for a product or service is usually the driving factor behind any type of community. The annual MVP Summit is occurring here in Seattle and Redmond next week with around 2,000 MVP attending from around the world.

More about Sean... For the past 5 years, Sean has been responsible for the MVP Program which now includes about 4,000 MVPs worldwide. Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals) are a select group of experts representing technology's best and brightest people who share a commitment to community. Sean will be leaving Microsoft later this year, see his blog post about it from last December: 15 years at Microsoft, coming to an end…mixed emotions.

For more information about the MVP Program, refer to http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/.

Using Ctrl+F1 in Office 2007 to hide/show ribbon toolbar

MSDNArchive — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:19:47 GMT

I recently found a useful hotkey tip using various applications in Office 2007. Just toggle Ctrl+F1 to show and hide the ribbon toolbar area. This is similar to the F11 hotkey in Internet Explorer to toggle IE full screen view on and off.

VSX Community Letter for March 2008 posted on VSX Team blog

MSDNArchive — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:30:00 GMT

Just posted the VSX Community Letter for March 2008.

VSX Community Letter for February 2008 posted on VSX Team blog

MSDNArchive — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 05:55:00 GMT

Reminder about the VSX Community Letter for February 2008.

VSX Community Letter for January 2008 posted on VSX Team blog

MSDNArchive — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 08:25:00 GMT

Just posted the VSX Community Letter for January 2008.

VSX Community Letter for October 2007 posted on VSX Team blog

MSDNArchive — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 11:20:00 GMT

Just posted the VSX Community Letter for October 2007.

VSX Community Letter for September 2007 posted on VSX Team blog

MSDNArchive — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:27:00 GMT

Just posted the VSX Community Letter for September 2007.

VSX Community Letter for August 2007 posted on VSX Team blog

MSDNArchive — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 20:23:00 GMT

Just posted the VSX Community Letter for August 2007.

Ultimate Ears on Channel 10 - Part 1

MSDNArchive — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:17:00 GMT

On June 15th, I informally hosted some folks from Ultimate Ears on the Microsoft campus in one of the cafeterias. During their visit, I invited the folks from the Channel 10 team to stop by to do a video interview for on10.net. The video they created is a compilation of edited video material from Ultimate Ears, a short introduction interview with me talking about community around Ultimate Ears headphones (passion for the product = community), and a detailed interview with Mike Dias of Ultimate Ears. You'll see interviewer Laura Foy trying out several UE headphone including listening to Def Leppard on my Zune. There is possible part 2 video on Ultimate Ears coming to Channel 10 in the near future, as indicated near the end of the interview with Mike. The video can be viewed online or downloaded (various formats) at:

Ultimate Ears: How music was meant to be heard
You've never listened to your Zune like THIS before. I used to think headphones are headphones are headphones - but now I know that's not the case. Musicians know their stuff and they need the highest quality, most precise audio in their ears and that's why most on-stage performers use Ultimate Ears. There's actually an insane amount of technology all crammed into that little tiny earpiece. I wish you could all experience what I heard but take a look at this clip and I'm sure you'll get a better understanding of how music was meant to be heard.

VSX Community Letter for July 2007 posted on VSX Team blog

MSDNArchive — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 20:30:00 GMT

Yesterday I posted the VSX Community Letter for July 2007 on the VSX Team blog. This is the first in a series of ongoing monthly letters to the Visual Studio Extensibility (VSX) community. The letter is also highlighted on the http://msdn.com/vsx/ developer center. The general theme of each community letter is a summary of information from the past month including: 1) what the VS Tools Ecosystem team has been working on 2) recent news, announcements, and content 3) useful community and events information. The letter concludes with a what we are working on now and a sneak preview of what to expect next month's letter.

Ultimate Ears visits Microsoft in Redmond on June 15th

MSDNArchive — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 23:23:00 GMT

Ultimate Ears visits Microsoft June 15th, building 34/35 cafeteria

Mike Dias from L.A. based Ultimate Ears is up here in Redmond visiting the main Microsoft campus on Friday June 15th from 11:00am to 6:00pm in the building 34/35 cafeteria. This is Mike's second visit to Microsoft, and all Microsoft employees are invited to stop by to meet Mike, learn more about Ultimate Ears headphones, and receive a demo of the amazing new Ultimate Ears triple.fi 10 Pro headphones.

New triple.fi 10 Pro headphones

The Ultimate Ears triple.fi 10 pro headphones for consumers are brand new and will be released later in late June. I've been listening to a pair for over a month now and they sound just as good (even a bit more natural deep bass) as the custom UE-10 models. The triple.fi 10s have 3 stereo drivers and a cross-over in each earpiece and are essentially a consumer (non-custom) version of their top of the line UE-10 headphones.

Reviews from users and publications

From a blog post about Mike's last visit to Microsoft in late 2005, Robert Scoble blogged about Ultimate Ears saying his Ultimate Ears the best he's ever heard. I talked to Robert at MIX07 a few months ago and he was still raving about his Ultimate Ears headphones, as does everyone I talk to who is part of the Ultimate Ears community. You can search online and find many other great reviews online including editor and review awards in many technical and audio publications.

Discounts for Microsoft employees

Ultimate Ears offers special discounts to Microsoft employees. Mike will have a limited supply of both black and white super.fi 5 Pro units (30 total) on hand for immediate sale.

Custom UE-10 headphones (free giveaway during visit

Any Microsoft employee who stops by and tries these amazing headphones out can enter for a free raffle to win a $900 valued pair of custom UE-10 monitors (raffle winner will be notified by email later that same evening).

Ultimate Ears used by over 80% all professional musicians world-wide

Ultimate Ears product line significantly dominates the professional music industry world-wide. To see a partial list (over 1000 listed) of professional artist and some celebrities who have Ultimate Ears headphones, check out:

Ultimate Ears artist and celebrity clientele list

Previous postings about Ultimate Ears custom and consumer headphones

For some detailed background information about Ultimate Ears custom and consumer headphones, refer to my previous detailed blog posts:

Quick tour of the Ultimate Ears lab in Irvin, California

In the summer of 2006, I visited Ultimate Ears in Orange County, Calif and recorded some Channel 9 style interviews including the one of Mike Dias below in the Ultimate Ears custom headphone lab.

Video: Ultimate Ears - Lab Tour 1

VSX Team Blog and VSX Developer Center

MSDNArchive — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 10:31:00 GMT

An update on a few things I'm working on relative to the new VSX community building including a team blog and the msdn.com site for VS extensibility. I created the new VSX Team Blog recently and kicked off the steady blog activity (the 5 entries this week all listed below) while here at TechEd 2007, some including short video interviews.

VSX is a short name and acronym I coined for Visual Studio eXtensibility. While I post all the blog entries on the VSX team blog, I do so in third person context as a kind of voice of the team for community. I'll differentiate from what I post on the VSX team blog and what I post here on my blog as follows. The VSX team blog will include mostly formal news and announcements from the VSX team, while here on my blog I'll post additional details about VSX team and community as well as topics beyond VSX.

I also now directly edit all of the content on the VSX developer center at http://msdn.com/vsx, which was updated (home page only) last week. Next week I'll be working in updating the VSX dev center site completely to take on a new template UI. Check out the http://msdn.com/vcsharp or the http://msdn.com/vbasic dev centers to see what the new UI looks like for tools and language sites on msdn.com. The new UI and additional updates for the VSX dev center is scheduled to be completed near the end of this month.

Sara Ford commands ScooterCam-1 at TechEd07

MSDNArchive — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 09:51:00 GMT

At TechEd 2007, Sara Ford drives what she calls ScooterCam-1 to get around the conference due to her injured leg from a recent hiking incident (see her blog post Not broken after all). The name ScooterCam is derived from the fact that she hooked up a camcorder to the scooter using duct tape to record first person videos while driving the scooter around the conference. C# developer Rob Robertson of Intel, who Sara and I got to know at the MVP/Influencer party the night before, jumps on the back of ScooterCam for a free ride. The ScooterCam turned out to be a mobile social community gathering during the breaks between sessions.

Video: Sara Ford commands ScooterCam-1 at TechEd07

New VSX Team blog, the search for Dr. Ex, going to MIX07

MSDNArchive — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 14:50:00 GMT

There’s a new VSX Team Blog created as part of my community activities on the VS Tools Ecosystem team. Some news and fun kick of a few of the first blog posts there.

You'll see in one of the first posts on the new VSX team blog some comments and a fun short video about my new quest to interview the VSX team member known as Dr. Ex. He is an Visual Studio extensibility expert and also known as the mad doctor who will attempt to address technical issues on the VS SDK on his blog.

I'll be at MIX07 from April 29th to May 2nd, blogging from Las Vegas on my blog here as well as on the new VSX team blog. Those who are not attending MIX07 can learn about the news, fun, live keynotes, sessions, and partner demos coming out of the show at the http://visitmix.com web site. You can also subscribe to the various news and multimedia that will be posted during the 72-hour conversation at http://visitmix.com/feeds/rss/.

From product planner to program manager

MSDNArchive — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 03:51:00 GMT

This week I took on a newly created position at Microsoft, as community program manager on the Visual Studio Ecosystem team focusing on developer community for VSX (Visual Studio Extensibility). The VSX community includes developers who build add-ins (tools, editors, designers, languages, and more) for Visual Studio using the VS SDK found at the VSX developer center at http://msdn.com/vsx.

It was not an easy decision for me to leave the Windows Live Platform division where there are many great people I worked with and many cool things going on there. Many of those cool new things from the Windows Live Platform group will be announced at the MIX07 event in a few weeks. Most of the what I was working on in Windows Live around product planning over the last 6+ months has been under non-disclosure, and I haven't been blogging in a while. In the next few weeks, I will be doing some activities for Channel 9 content and http://dev.live.com/ blogging leading up to and during the MIX07 conference. In my transition back to the developer division, I'll be bringing knowledge and enthusiasm about Windows Live to the Visual Studio division which may contribute in various future efforts for Visual Studio based SDKs and add-ins for developers who are using Windows Live Platform services.

For those who don't know my past, here is my bio:

Ken Levy is the community program manager on the Visual Studio Ecosystem team focusing on developer community for VSX (Visual Studio Extensibility). The VSX community includes developers who build add-ins (tools, editors, designers, languages, and more) for Visual Studio using the VS SDK found at the VSX developer center http://msdn.com/vsx. Ken was previously a product planner on Microsoft's Windows Live Platform team working on developer community and future product planning. Before working in the Windows Live division, Ken was a product manager in the VS Data team responsible Visual FoxPro product management, the VFP developer web site, as well as sponsorship of the new XML tools in Visual Studio 2005 created by the WebData XML team. Ken is a long time recognized member of the FoxPro community and has developed many high profile applications and tools in all versions of FoxBase/FoxPro since 1986. Ken spent over four years as a software engineer consulting for Microsoft on the Visual FoxPro team from version 3.0 through 7.0 and is the author of many components of Visual FoxPro including the Class Browser and Component Gallery. While working as a consultant at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the 1990s, Ken developed many public domain open source programs including GenScrnX and other developer tools used worldwide in creating in-house and commercial applications. Ken is a former technical contributing writer and editor to many software magazines, and has been a frequent speaker at industry conferences world wide since 1992. Ken's blog is at http://blogs.msdn.com/klevy.

Some additional information about my career background is contained in a detailed blog post I made last year: Enduring adventures to Antarctica and Microsoft.

In the spirit of transparency, below is the exact job description of the newly created position I just started on yesterday which should give some insight the various new VSX community efforts that I will be focused on:

Visual Studio is the world’s leading development environment, and our large partner ecosystem helped us attain that position. Hundreds of companies extend Visual Studio with features such as new development languages, application lifecycle tools, IDE enhancements, reusable components and much more. These partner offerings help to fill the gaps in the Microsoft product line and deliver tailored end-to-end solutions to customers that we wouldn’t reach otherwise. The Visual Studio Ecosystem team is chartered with growing and strengthening this developer tools ecosystem. We ship the Visual Studio SDK, help ISVs integrate their products with Microsoft tools, and engage with the enthusiast community extending Visual Studio. We received the Developer Division’s Lighthouse award for team innovation and execution excellence in using agile development methodology, shipping frequent SDK releases, and engaging our partners for mutual success.

We are looking for a strong program manager to lead our initiatives growing the number of enthusiast developers creating Visual Studio extensions. You will work with our product and marketing teams to build a developer community from the ground up. You will coordinate and execute an overall strategy encompassing community infrastructure, team engagement, content, and product features. You yourself may also become a major presence and central figure in the community through blogs, forums, and conferences. This position leads a key pillar of our ecosystem strategy, and will receive a lot of visibility both internally and externally to Microsoft.

The ideal candidate will have prior success in growing some type of community (preferably developer-related) and the ability to manage many concurrent projects. This position offers a unique opportunity to exercise your leadership, project management, and strategic planning skills. Responsibilities include but are not limited to:
· Own the plan to establish a new, self-sustaining developer community
· Drive the product team’s community engagement
· Personally maintain a major presence in the community
· Speak at conferences and other community events
· Establish the online community infrastructure
· Launch a new MVP discipline
· Coordinate special development projects
· Find new ways to grow and enrich the community

I'm on James Lau's team, his blog is at http://blogs.msdn.com/jameslau/. I'll be blogging here weekly and working on other types of online content starting next week. I'm part of a team working on making overall enhancements to the VSX developer center at http://msdn.com/vsx. Starting in May, I plan to post a monthly letter there to the VSX community with information about what's new with the VS SDK, community news, upcoming events, and what's coming soon from the VS Ecosystem team. If you are a VSX developer (developer who has used the VS SDK), feel free to contact me and let me know your ideas and suggestions around improving the VS SDK and helping build an enthusiastic, passionate, and successful developer community around Visual Studio extensibility.

Spring of Windows Live sites, services, and products

MSDNArchive — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 03:27:00 GMT

feedback.live.com has an updated list of Windows Live services for feedback (31 listed as of today, with some beta sites removed previously listed):

Feedback Services

Live Maps

Live QnA

Live Search

Live.com

Windows Live Account

Windows Live Alerts

Windows Live Call

Windows Live Call for Free

Windows Live Custom Domains

Windows Live Dev

Windows Live Expo

Windows Live Favorites

Windows Live Gallery

Windows Live Hotmail

Windows Live ID

Windows Live Ideas

Windows Live Mail desktop

Windows Live Mail for mobile

Windows Live Messenger

Windows Live Messenger for mobile

Windows Live Mobile

Windows Live OneCare

Windows Live OneCare Family Safety

Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner

Windows Live Product Upload

Windows Live Publishing Portal

Windows Live Shopping

Windows Live Spaces

Windows Live Toolbar and Desktop Search

Windows Live Web Search

Windows Live Writer

Summer of Windows Live sites, services, and products

MSDNArchive — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 09:32:00 GMT

There are some cool new Windows Live web sites and services rolling out lately, including my favorite new one gallery.live.com. The new Windows Live Gallery is a great resources for users of Windows Live services, and also has a story for developers contribute to Windows Live Gallery, for developers and business who want to submit their own Windows Live components such as live.com gadgets, Windows Live Toolbar Custom Buttons, Windows Live Messenger Bots and Activities, Windows Live Search Macros, Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets, and Windows Desktop Search Applications & iFilters.

Another cool new Windows Live site, here a product download, is the Windows Live Toolbar at toolbar.live.com. Windows Live Domains released at domains.live.com. There are other new Windows Live relates sites to check out, like get.live.com, experience.live.com, inside.live.com, account.live.com (requires Windows Live ID sign-in). Many product and services including betas are available at ideas.live.com.

feedback.live.com has a growing list of Windows Live services for feedback (41 listed as of today):

Feedback Services

Windows Live Academic Search
Windows Live Book Search
Windows Live Call
Windows Live Call for Free
Windows Live Custom Domains
Windows Live Dev
Windows Live Expo
Windows Live Favorites
Windows Live Feeds
Windows Live Gallery
Windows Live ID
Windows Live Ideas
Windows Live Image Search
Windows Live Local
Windows Live Mail
Windows Live Mail Desktop
Windows Live Messenger
Windows Live Mobile
Windows Live Mobile Mail
Windows Live Mobile Search
Windows Live Near Me Search
Windows Live News Search
Windows Live Newsbot
Windows Live OneCare
Windows Live Product Search
Windows Live Publishing Portal
Windows Live QnA
Windows Live Safety Center
Windows Live Search
Windows Live Search Answers
Windows Live Search Center
Windows Live Search Help
Windows Live Search Macros
Windows Live Search Translation
Windows Live Shopping
Windows Live Spaces
Windows Live Toolbar and Desktop Search
Windows Live Web Search
Windows Live Web Search SDK
Windows Live Wifi Suite
Windows Live.com

Creating mashups using the Virtual Earth Interactive SDK

MSDNArchive — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 22:57:00 GMT

One of the cool things we are doing with the Windows Live Dev site at dev.live.com is hosting mashups on the site itself for samples, documentation, etc. The Virtual Earth team recently released a new Virtual Earth Interactive SDK mashup at dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk recently announced on the the Virtual Earth developer blog. The Virtual Earth team provided me with a cool demo script to show at TechEd next week that highlights some of the cool features of the new VE Interactive SDK. Here is a fun simple demo script that you can try out to create a Virtual Earth mashup web page component:

Go to dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk.
Open the page, and say something like “what do I want to do? Let’s draw a polygon on the map”.
Expand Draw lines, and then click on Draw a polygon.
The map changes and shows a polygon.
“OK, so that’s what I want to do, so let’s get the code to do it” .
Switch to the Source Code tab and click the Copy button.
1. Note: if you select the code and copy it manually, it preserves the whitespace and looks better when you paste it into Notepad. If you choose the Copy button, it is faster, but doesn’t look as good when you paste it into Notepad. If you paste into a new HTML file in Visual Studio, you get all the nice formatting, so that might be the best way to go.
Open Notepad (or a new HTML in Visual Studio) and paste in the code you just copied.
Save the file to the desktop as test.html.
Minimize everything, and double-click test.html.
When the page loads, click the security bar and choose Allow Blocked Content. Depending on the audience, maybe explain that the security only pops up when running locally.
1. Alternately, if you are running IIS, save the file in a Web directory and then open it from the browser—no security message.
Click on the Draw a Polygon button to see that it does what you expected—draws a polygon on the map.

Some comments about the Virtual Earth Interactive SDK:

You don’t need to be a professional developer to add maps to your web pages. The interactive SDK makes it very simple to get started.
For active web developers, the interactive SDK still provides the full reference SDK on its own tab.
The interactive SDK is a mashup that shows you how to build a mashup—it’s a self-describing “meta” SDK.

Windows Live Dev launched in beta mode at dev.live.com

MSDNArchive — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 21:57:00 GMT

The Windows Live Dev site has launched today in beta mode at http://dev.live.com. The Windows Live Dev site will be an dynamic and evolving web site as both a home for developers building on the Windows Live Platform as well as hosting mashups that uses technologies and services we provide. We will still have the Windows Live Developer Center at http://msdn.com/live as a landing page from the http://msdn.com site. The msdn.com/live dev center will be updated later today to update various links to the new content at dev.live, and there will be a fair amount of cross-linking between the two sites going forward. I'll post a blog entry in the near future going into more details about how dev.live is a mashup itself using msdn.com content and more, and how msdn.com/live will relate to dev.live going forward. There is a Feedback link on the dev.live home page. The devlive team will be reading all feedback we receive as we want to developers to contribute to the ideas and suggestions for this evolving Windows Live Dev site.

My first LiveSide.net podcast interview

MSDNArchive — Wed, 17 May 2006 14:53:00 GMT

I was recently inteviewed in a LiveSide.net podcast by Chris Overd and Harrison Hoffman when they were visiting the Microsoft main campus in Redmond along with others from the LiveSide.net team. Refer to Interview with Ken Levy, Product Planner for the Windows Live Platform.

Last week we sat down with Ken Levy, Product Planner for the Windows Live Platform to talk about how Microsoft intends to support 3rd party developers across Windows Live. In this interview Ken talks about why Messenger Add-Ins will not be in the options menu by default and how he wants as much feedback as possible from you the developers, especially regarding what scenarios you want to achieve and what API's you would like to see exposed in order to do this.

0.00 Introduction
0.59 Messenger Add-Ins
6.28 Windows Live Developer Community
7.10 Bots and Activities
10.46 Business Opportunities
12.14 Windows Live Developer platform as a whole
14.05 Ken's Mix 06 Demoes
16.23 Gadgets
17.45 Ken questions us about what we want to see
20.00 End

Filesize: 9.12MB

Windows Live Dev site coming soon at dev.live.com

MSDNArchive — Wed, 17 May 2006 14:47:00 GMT

The Windows Live Platform is about opening Windows Live services to create shared opportunity for developers and businesses. Open Windows Live services via APIs and SDKs to 3rd parties to create a virtuous ecosystem that mutually benefits users, developers, partners, advertisers and Microsoft. Many of the developer centric services that we release will occur in stages, with new APIs available as well as improved and more consistent APIs with existing services over time. Some of our goals include Users are in control, easy for developers to make money, Simple HTTP based APIs, any able to build applications and components for about any operating system platform, browser, language, and device.

Duncan Mackenzie recently created his first video behind the camera for a Channel 9 video was the recent one posted called Windows Live Hack Day 2006. If you jump forward in the video to around the 9 minutes marker, Duncan interviews me for a few minutes about the Windows Live Platform efforts for developers where I disclose a new web site coming called dev.live.com for developers - the developer-centric Windows Live Platform home page called Windows Live Dev.

We plan to have a preview (coming soon) page for http://dev.live.com next week and launch the new web site sometime in June. Windows Live Dev will still use the content that is linked to at http://msdn.com/live and content like downloads, whitepapers, etc. will still be on msdn.com. The Windows Live Dev site will be a cool new web site that will be a mashup application itself aggregating data/info/content/news from msdn.com, Microsoft team blogs, community blogs/sites, discussion forums, Windows Live services, etc.

Mary Jo Foley recently did a phone interview with me and published an article on Microsoft-Watch.com called Windows Live Puts More Muscle Behind Its Developer Push which details some additional plan and goals for the Windows Live Platform for developers.

Talking about the Windows Live Platform at VSLive in Orlando

MSDNArchive — Wed, 17 May 2006 14:32:00 GMT

I'm currently in Orlando, Florida speaking later this morning at the VSLive conference on the Windows Live Platform for developers in back to back sessions titled Modern Web Development from Mashups to IM-Based Bots. The updated abstract for the dual session is below:

This session will go into details with demos on what the Windows Live Platform platform is and how it relates to developers. Details will also include how to developers and business can monetize using the various Windows Live services as well as add value to existing web, desktop, and device applications. There will be many demos showing how various Windows Live API services can be used together to create useful mashups. The demos will include API services and developer SDKs using services such as Messenger, Search, Virtual Earth (VE), Windows Live Local, as well as previews to possible future APIs such as Contacts, Calendar, and Mail. The Virtual Earth development part of this presentation includes includes SOAP and JavaScript APIs providing render, map navigation, geo-coding, proximity searching and routing features. The VE code demos will demonstrate how to get started with adding maps and GIS features to your applications including best practices and solution tips. Attendees will gain a solid understanding of the Virtual Earth platform with the skills and samples to get quickly get started. There will also be details included for our new developer-centric Windows Live Platform web site and a preview into what new services and developer offerings are coming in the future for the platform. The first half of this dual session will focus on Search APIs, Search Macros and Virtual Earth. The second half will include demos of the APIs for Messenger, Gadgets for live.com, and mashups using Windows Live services.

Some related team blogs with additional information on these topics include MSN Search Team Blog, Virtual Earth Developer Blog, Windows Live ID Team Blog, Windows Live Messenger Team Blog.

Refer to Katie Blanch's Blog for developers creating .NET based Add-ins to the Windows Live Messenger client. Katie just started her new blog, see her recent detailed post All About Messenger Add-ins. Katie is also here in Orlando at VSLive and will be involved in the demos for Messenger Add-ins in the dual Windows Live Platform session here.

Check out Via Virtual Earth created and hosted by Dr. Neil Roodyn and friends/partners, be sure to review their Gallery of Virtual Earth mashups.

WebCast: MSN Search APIs: Building Web Search into Your Applications - Find out how to harness the power of Web Search in your applications. This webcast provides an overview of the MSN Web Search application programming interfaces (APIs). We also demonstrate how to use these APIs to create applications that help users search for information on the Web.

Refer to http://msdn.com/live for additional information and downloads on these topics.

How Windows Live relates to MSN

MSDNArchive — Thu, 11 May 2006 01:50:00 GMT

Recently, Mary Jo Foley of Microsoft-Watch.com interviewed Blake Irving, Microsoft Vice President, Windows Live Platform Group. The transcript is at Windows Live: The 50,000-Foot View and contains the excerpt below:

Microsoft Watch (MSW): When I define Windows Live (in ten words or less), I call it Microsoft's services extensions to Windows. Do you have a better shorthand way to refer to Live? Is Live really more than MSN services rebranded – another definition some have applied to it?

Irving: When I explain Windows Live, I describe a service that seamlessly brings Web experiences together with Windows software and provides greater relevance in people's lives. Saying that Windows Live is simply extensions to Windows is too Windows-centric, and saying that it is MSN services rebranded also sells Windows Live short.